Full disclosure: One of the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten in my life was in 1996, in the Rhineland-Palatinate town of Bad Kreuznach. I was in Germany after being recalled to active duty in support of Bill Clinton’s wag-the-dog Balkans fracas, and on one occasion when a buddy and I were both off-duty, we went up to Bad Kreuznach, where he lived, and hit up a local Italian restaurant. I ordered a sausage pizza, and man, was that ever good. Thin, crispy crust, just the right about of toppings; not quite like most American pizzas, but it was verwunderlich.
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I didn’t get any cocaine with it. That was then, this is now, and it seems now that you can get cocaine with your pizza if you know the code words: Ich nehme eine große Wurstpizza mit Menüpunkt vierzig! (I’ll have a large sausage pizza with menu item forty!) And, when reading a story like this, it’s difficult not to crack a joke.
German police busted a pizzeria in the western city of Düsseldorf that also delivered a side order of cocaine when customers asked for item number 40 on the menu.
“That was one of the best-selling pizzas,” criminal director Michael Graf von Moltke told reporters in Düsseldorf.
He said police was first tipped off by suspicious food inspectors in March. When drug squad officers began observing the restaurant they soon discovered why pizza number 40 was so popular, Moltke told reporters on Monday, German news agency dpa reported.
I’ll bet it was one of their best-selling pizzas. However profitable this pizza probably was, the pizzeria manager has earned his entry into the International Dumb Crooks record book:
When police buzzed the apartment of the pizzeria manager, the 36-year-old allegedly threw a bag of drugs out of the window, which “fell right into the arms of the police officers,” Düsseldorf police said. The bounty included 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds) of cocaine, 400 grams (14.1 ounces) of cannabis and 268,000 euros ($290,378) in cash.
Police said the restaurant manager, who was released from detention after a few days, soon reopened his business and started selling pizza number 40 with the the cocaine side order again. That gave investigators an opportunity to look into the supply chain and after several weeks, some 150 officers busted an entire drug ring in western Germany, arrested three suspects including the 22-year-old head of the drug operation, and raided homes and businesses of another 12 suspects.
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Oh meine Güte, wirklich!
This dumb crook literally was sticking his business in other people’s noses. We note that he was dealing in more than cocaine, although the report of cannabis makes one wonder if it’s all smoke and mirrors. One might think that this is snort of a good idea, but it clearly didn’t work out that way for this Düsseldorf drug dealer. It’s just as well; Germans love their beer, and I can attest that they produce some great wines down around Heidelberg, where I was stationed. But obviously, cocaine is too much; one has to draw a line somewhere. He got caught and will now pay the price, the German justice system being rather unforgiving in such matters; after all, with great powder comes great responsibility.
See Related: Nature Gets Weird: Now, It’s Cocaine Sharks
Seriously? Florida Lawmaker Proposes Relaxing Rules on Shooting… Bears on Crack.
One unconfirmed rumor has it that the pizzeria drug dealer planned also to hire attractive young women to start a cocaine pizza delivery service. He planned to call them the Powderpuff Girls.
This seems appropriate.